The idea that a rock, a bat, or a knife is a better home defense weapon than a gun is utterly preposterous. Have you ever been confronted with a knife? I have. Guess what, the gun trumped.
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Gnomes, I did. Your statement that killing someone is traumatizing, no matter the circumstances, is purely subjective, is your opinion, without any scientific proof behind. Some good literature contains that idea, for better drama sake.

Quote:The idea that a rock, a bat, or a knife is a better home defense weapon than a gun is utterly preposterous. Have you ever been confronted with a knife? I have. Guess what, the gun trumped.

Have you won a lottery? I have. That must mean it totally happens to everyone.

Besides, "home defense weapons" seem ridiculous in the first place. I was talking about mug situations. This includes surprise, stress and not being ex-military.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours

Quote:Gnomes, I did. Your statement that killing someone is traumatizing, no matter the circumstances, is purely subjective, is your opinion, without any scientific proof behind. Some good literature contains that idea, for better drama sake.

Wellm sure, killing someone is the easiest thing in the world - of course, if it was, well...

JJ, when you are innocent and your life is threatened by some criminal, your defense may lead to his death. There are endless of such cases, and I never heard anyone regretting they took a scum life in order to survive.

Life is precious if you consider it an unique gift and feel responsible. It looses its aura and price if is used to piss others, and this is what criminals do.

It seems you don't understand the concept of becoming traumatized. It has nothing to do with doing "the right thing".

If there is a home invader and you smear him over your living room walls with your shotgun (and maybe even the police later finds that he wasn't armed with a deadly weapon) - do you really think, come the next day it's business as usual and you'll go and scrub your walls clean, whistling a happy little tune?

Imagine, the guy isn't dead. The main force of the shell hit him in the shoulder, shredding it more or less, and now the guy is lying on your carpet, cries in total anguish like a pack of hell hounds and bleeds slowly to death. Your wife and children are coming to see what's happening...

Well, it is hard to know when never happened to you or me. What I wrote was that I never heard about people suffering from substantial trauma because they killed someone in the process of defending them selves.

You can get serious trauma from accidentally taking a life, this we know. But "no matter the circumstances" is just not true.

But the professional thief will strike anyone who is not in the house. The owner arrives home, and all the goods have been removed. The thief always leaves phone. They are also able to make burglary the day time a block of flats. Steal the car with the alarm, and police are next.

Quote:Well, it is hard to know when never happened to you or me. What I wrote was that I never heard about people suffering from substantial trauma because they killed someone in the process of defending them selves.

You can get serious trauma from accidentally taking a life, this we know. But "no matter the circumstances" is just not true.

But that's not what we are talking about.
We are talking about the suggestion of our righteous, loving Christian to keep a shotgun at home and smear your living room walls with the blood of anyone who puts a foot into your house, because they just MAY be a horde of aliens or a pack of demon worshippers who wants to torture your family to death.

Whereas I think - and I'm not alone here - that most people will be better of defending themselves with something non-lethal. One aspect here is the fact that you absolutely do NOT want to make a slaughterhouse out of your living room, ESPECIALLY not with a wife and children. For one, that will definitely decrease your feeling of well-being, living there, and for two, the pictures and sounds and stink may never leave you - of course, if you are or have been a soldier, serving in a war zone, that point may be moot, since you'll already live with them. And a good thing it is, that we cannot just forget these things either - if we could, we probably were predators.

However, there is another point here to keep in mind. The overwhelming majority of people who did NOT already kill has qualms about using lethal force. Even policemen hesitate, especially the first time, when it comes to using a real gun with live ammo on a human target. They do NOT hesitate, though, using a baton or guns with rubber bullets.
The same can be expected from the normal Joe next door. He may simply hesitate, especially if he doesn't perceive an immediate threat to his life, and that may prove fatal. However, he'll probably shoot with a gun firing rubber, wax or plastic bullets without any hesitation - should he kill the invader with them, hitting him unluckily, it was bad luck and it wasn't messy. He shoots to incapacitate which covers all angles.

Sure, if a guy has both his hands aroun your throat, and you hold a gun and fire point blank into his guts, before everything turns black, you won't have any second thoughts later about shredding his entrails. You will probably be traumatized, but more because of those hands around your throat than anything else.

I don't know, they have in US a 10-20 times more gun crimes than any country in EU, by citizen rate. Here where I live, having a gun is out of question, but if everyone could buy one, probably opinion would change too. For now, my best weapon is my home key.

And if it has to be a shotgun, there is non-lethal ammo available for those as well.

Of course, our loving Christian will tell us, that you cannot have anough stopping power and that a threat ceases to be a threat only if you've plastered the walls with him, but not everyone is a citizen of Texas AND loves his enemies so much that he wants to hang pieces of them on your walls, so I'd simply consider making use of modern technology.

An alarm system helps, of course, should you feel somewhat ... exposed.

I think is going too much into unrealistic situations. A thief will almost never break in your house if you and your family are at home, because : a) he does not want to be catch, b) he needs to search for goodies and your presence prevents him searching well.

Which leaves to the real situations, where a thief breaks in your office/work place and often is armed with something. Many people here talk about protecting your family, but in real life it is 99% of situations protect your money. So, killing someone to save your money would me a more appropriate title.